Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Ann Ravel’s Shakespearian Tragedy

In Shakespeare’s
The Tempest,
a conspirator discusses murdering a King, “And, by that destiny, to perform an
act, Whereof what’s past is prologue; what to come, In yours and my discharge.”
The immortal line reminds (or warns) how past events direct the present and
predict the future.

Federal
elections are ready-made plays where potent mixtures of power, money, ideology,
and personality coalesce to produce climatic moments when Americans select
their leaders. The FEC plays a small but significant role in the drama, regulating
the stage where candidates, parties, and advocacy groups perform.

FEC Vice
Chair Ann Ravel, however, is determined to transform the Commission’s role from
stage manager to producer; in essence giving it final say over ‘budgets’ and ‘scripts.’
In Checks and Balances for Economic Growth
(MUR 6729), the Commission deadlocked on whether online advertisements fell
under the FEC’s aegis. The Republican Commissioners, adhering to precedent, refused to embroil the
FEC in online political advertisements. The vote, however, allowed Ms. Ravel to
advocate for expanding
the Commission’s enforcement authority into cyberspace.

Commissioner
Ravel’s past career as head of California’s Fair Political Practices Commission
(FPPC) revealed the prologue and predicted the future—a future inimical to the
American political experience.

Ravel fixated
on internet speech in her tenure at the FPPC. In 2012, she proposed
requiring California political bloggers—even those residing outside
the state—to disclose funding sources and place disclaimers on their
websites. The widely panned measure would have eviscerated anonymous
online speech and required volumes of regulations.

Among the questions
raised: Could a blogger evade disclosure by working for a consultant, not
the campaign itself? What value should be reported for a hyperlink from one
website to another? Would disclosure be required if a candidate responded to a
favorable blog post by later buying advertising on the site? The FPPC quickly
canned the measure after immediate and fierce blowback.

The Vice
Chair’s current bid to regulate internet political speech has also attracted stinging
reviews from critics. And as Chairman Lee E. Goodmanpointed out, the proposal
would place the FEC in the ultra vires
position of regulating speech itself, instead of political expenditures.

Commissioner
Ravel’s background foretold more than just her speech-stifling ambitions. She
also revealed a penchant to cast herself in a starring role. In her last act as
FPPC head, she triumphantly held a news conference to
announce a settlement in a “dark money” case, and then promptly hit the media
circuit.

Now as Vice Chair,
she recently completed a three-city “listening”
tour. Her tour happened to coincide with the height of election season in
the ambit of three hotly contested races. A Larry
Lessig-backed group (one
tentacle in his Less-Squid
of “reformer” organizations) heavily promoted
the tour and provided handy talking
points to supporters attending the meetings.

Unfortunately,
Commissioner Ravel has carried over a final attribute from her Golden State
days: a penchant for sloppiness. In her FPPC closing act, she repeatedly
cited “the Koch Brothers” and their “network,” as villains, despite their denials of involvement
in the case. She later retracted
the charge in
an interview.
After last week’s deadlock, she cited a 2003 California government
report to support her internet-regulatory objectives. The report’s recommendations,
however, do not comport with her aims:

Our Commission believes that the
advantages of enabling Internet political activity currently do, and for the
foreseeable future will, far outweigh the benefits of restricting its potential
through heavy-handed regulation. For that reason, we urge the legislature, the
FPPC, and all others with interpretive or enforcement power to resist the
temptation to adopt laws or regulations that, no matter how well intended,
would have the practical effect of reducing the remarkable ability of new
technology to empower candidates and voters. In particular, we think that the
government should resist calls for excessive requirements that could unnecessarily,
and perhaps unintentionally, inhibit or criminalize citizen participation in
politics via the Internet.

Vice Chair
Ravel took an important
step by voting to update the Citizens
United regulations. Some thought
it was the beginning of a new act for the FEC. The past may be prologue, but
that doesn't mean the script can’t be edited.